Mar 10, 2011

How is the world different now from what it was like when you were a child?

Many many ways. Cars are greatly improved ad have air bags and seat belts and lots of laws about when and where children can sit.
There is more than just the US Mail service to deliver letters and packages. UPS, Fed-Ex and a host of other smaller ones.
There were converse All-Star tennis shoes and that was pretty much the only choice. Now there is Nike, and a huge host of others including the ones that I have now that rock back and forth with you when walking and are suppose to help improve your muscle strength. I also wore special shoes all the time and most everyone wore nice shoes that now we pretty much only wear on sundays except for the rising generation that wears tennis shoes to church. Well I guess I used to as well but only to play basketball.  We had to cook on an electric stove and use an electric oven. After Marie and I had been married three os so years we bought our first Micro-wave oven for $800.00 and it was listed for more than that. Marie took lessons to learn how to cook cakes and other meals in the new oven that lasted us for a lot of years. Now they are less than $50.00.
I watched the first man carrying rocket go into outer space and now they are stopping pretty much the space shuttle program where they can fly the same ship up and down from orbiting the earth for several trips before retiring it. Airplanes have also become very advanced especially warship aircraft including Drones taht are remote controlled from miles away.
Super glue was invented along with a whole host of other things that were invented for use by the military and then marketed to the public.
We had a Black and White TV and no computers, and in fact no calculators. I used a slide rule in college the last two years that they were teaching classes with them. Calculators capable of adding, subtracting and some other limited calculations were possible. I even went and toured The computer floor where University of Utah had their computer. It was capable of doing a lot but took up an entire floor of the building. Calculators can now do more than it could and in lightning speeds faster than it as well. Home computers were invented after Hayden was born or at least started to be marketed to the public in general. Apple and IBM were the two main manufacturers of them and we had a small version called a Instructor 50 that I had bought when working at Signetics. The other computers at the time were the TRS 80 by IBM and the Apple computer for education purposes mainly by Apple.
Record players played the old 78's and then 33 and a 1/3 rpm records and now I can't buy a player to play them.
Video cameras and cassette tape players were invented and replaced by smaller video camera's including ones on the computer and Ipod and Ipads have replaced a lot of them. We had a cartoon called Dick Tracy who spoke and looked at the person to who he had called on his wrist watch. Well cell phones are almost there now and I am sure video capabilities are not far off in the future.
Camera's were capable of Black and White images and not color even though it would come out soon in my youth but now digital camera's are almost knocking film out of existence. There a few die hard photographer's still using film but very very few.
TV's are now standard in every home but just not any TV they have to be big screen TV's. 42 inches and larger if possible.  I repaired TV's when I was first married by replacing electronic tubes and now new small TV's can be purchased for less than  repair bill then.
Wind generating power plants are all over and the coal ones are going away. Hydro plants are still in use but they too are meeting with a lot of enviromentalist restrictions. We had Presidents who loved their country and now one that hates it yet he is the President and Commander in Chief.
The internet was also invented by the military and then released to the public. Now shopping on line makes it super easy to spend money t hat you don't have along with credit cards that were only used for gasoline when I was young. It is uncommon not to get several invited to a credit card company for a card in one week anymore, except I now send it back to them with all the trash I can stuff into them so they will get the idea that I really don't want them. It is working.
A letter in the form of a blog is much faster and easier than the old handwritten ones and will more likely be kept over time a lot longer than they were.
Cruise's were not heard of then even though people took vacations all over the world then. But now they are almost so common that if you haven't been on at least one if not one a year you are considered very odd.
I use to haul 4 buckets holding about 40 lbs of coal from the coal shed to the furnace around 60 feet and into the house and down the steps into the furnace room every day. I got to where I would pack all four at one time so I didn't have to do two trips. Now we have a gas furnace and no coal other than out in a shed for emergency heat only. (That 160 lbs of coal each trip has not been missed at all.)
We have gone from single pane glass windows to standard two pane and lots of times three panes. It has helped with conserving heat inside of the home and using less energy.
We have even seen changes in the church. There was an assistant quorum of the 12 when I was growing up and now there are several quorums of the seventy and no assistants to the twelve. The church has also gone for a million members to nearly 14 million and my mission in Texas is divided into about 7 or 8 of them.
I have seen a lot of change and most of it for the good even though the devil uses each new technology for himself as well. I won't list them.
Last but not least the cold war has changed dramatically. The Berlin Wall which I never expected to see come down is now down. The world politics have changed. Japan and China have become world powers and America stands on the brink of disaster but the Lord isn't finished here and it will stand until He comes again.

Mar 9, 2011

What did you do on New Year's Eve? Were you allowed to stay up until midnight? Did you do anything special at midnight?

I remember one particular New Year's Eve and it was in Metarie, LA. I had gone with mom and dad and Stan down to visit Alma and Loyle. We had gone to visit between Christmas and New Year's. I remember going to New Orleans earlier that evening and going through the French Quarter's. It was an education for me and I didn't particularly like it. We stayed in the car with the doors locked. Then we played Monopoly after we got back to Alma's. It lasted all evening but I didn't play the entire time. I don't remember for sure but it seems like I was pretty tired and fell asleep before midnight but was awaken easily by the noise of the fire crackers and fireworks that started going off just before midnight.
So that was the most memorable one I ever had but I am sure that I stayed up for some of them but I really don't recall for sure. Anyway ringing in the New Year I don't remember being any real big deal or I would probably had a few more memories stick. I am sure we banged pots and pans or made some noise for a short period of time but we never did use and fireworks or fire crackers. It just wasn't something that we needed to spend any money on since money was never in great abundance.